Inaccuracy

“ It is one in which detail is more fatal to a man even than inaccuracy, and it is one in which hardly a single observer who has been really soaked in his subject has avoided the most ludicrous conclusions. ”

“ One often hears that something is ‘quite accurate.’ If I ask a workman if his{14} work is accurate, he will indignantly refer to his foot-rule to prove it; but if you were to ask if his foot-rule is accurate he would doubt your sanity. What is accuracy for one purpose is inaccuracy for another. ”

“ Men under such circumstances in general err from an inaccuracy or deficiency of statement, proceeding from the confusion and uncertainty of a mind oppressed and agitated by the burthen of important affairs, or difficult and intricate circumstances. ”

“ We say utterly false, for the means taken to insure correctness, as to the number of persons who slept in a particular place on a particular night, are contemptibly inefficient. With the smallest foresight, we can furnish a number of tables proving its inaccuracy ”

“ Statements, the inaccuracy of which may easily be ascertained, are again and again repeated, until it would almost seem that upon reiteration of error and untruth a certain degree of dependence has been placed for the creation of prejudice against reform. ”

“ But when we reason in words of general signification, and fall upon a general inference which is false, though it be commonly called error, it is indeed an absurdity or senseless speech. For error is but a deception in presuming that somewhat is past, or to come, of which, though it were not past, or not to come, yet there was no impossibility discoverable. ”

“ And it seems to show, moreover, how, when men of patient and zealous accuracy, have taken the greatest pains to expose and correct so causeless an error, common readers and writers too, will carelessly and lazily slip back into the old blunder, thus making the counsels of the learned of no effect, and loving darkness rather than light, error rather than exactness, because they are too shiftless to find a good reason for what is laid down before them as truth. ”

“ That such a fallacy could be imposed upon any human understanding, or that an author could have advanced a position so remote from truth and reason, any other ways than as a declaimer, to shew to what extent he could stretch his imagination, and with what strength he could press his principle, would scarcely have been credible, had not this lady kindly shewn us how far weakness may be deluded, or indolence amused. ”

“ The improbability I talk of, is that of an irregular fact, contrary to the order and course of nature, and therefore unaccountable. A chain of imagined facts linked together according to the order of nature, find easy entrance into the mind; and if described with warmth of fancy, they produce complete images, including ideal presence. But it is with great difficulty that we admit any irregular fact; for an irregular fact always puzzles the judgement. Doubtful of its reality we immediately enter upon reflection, and discovering the cheat, lose all relish and concern. ”

“ For in the first place the defective and fallacious evidence of our senses, a system of observation slothful and unsteady, as though acting from chance, a tradition vain and depending on common report, a course of practice intent upon effects, and servile, blind, dull, vague, and abrupt experiments, and lastly our careless and meagre natural history, have collected together, for the use of the understanding, the most defective materials as regards philosophy and the sciences. ”

“ How much accident sometimes serves us--nay, how often our own follies and indiscretions lead us to better results than our wisdom and prudence could have attained!
"Conduct is fate," "Knowledge is power," are the favourite doctrines of those who believe they have conduct, or presume they have knowledge. Carried to the infinite, both axioms are true, but in every degree below the infinite they are false; and oh, how false with man! Every abstract, indeed, is often found to be a practical falsehood. ”

“ Again, Truth may also be proved indirectly, by showing the folly and error of its opposite; and when this is done, not by methodical and gradual exposition, but in immediate and intuitive clearness, then this is indirect, and, in relation to the Idea, negative Wit; exciting laughter in those to whom it is addressed:—it is Wit as the source of the Ridiculous; for Error in its direct and intuitive aspect is essentially ridiculous. ”

“ Sense-deceptions, faulty observation, distraction, exaggeration, illusion, fallacy, and error are not idle abstract fancies of the psychologist, but stern realities; and their existence emphasizes the need in the determination of truth and the maintenance of a sound rationality, of a calm, unprejudiced judgment, of an experienced and balanced intelligence, of a discerning sense for nice distinctions, of an appreciation of the circumstances under which it is peculiarly human to err. ”

“ Habitual judgments of the mind which are illusions because unverified, may occur again and again in millions of cases, and the repetition but confirms the illusion, and such intuitive illusions can hardly be dispelled even by overwhelming knowledge, but the truth and the error will appear side by side and be entertained as verities, and the mind will search for some metaphysical explanation of them. ”

“ In this sense then it may be stated that all error as well as knowledge testifies to reality, and that all our knowledge is certitude based upon reality, and that fallacies would not be possible were there not realities about which inferences are made. ”

“ Bulwer, in remarking that error is a view of some facts instead of a survey of all, indicated the key to logical fallacy. Error lies principally in defective premises. Sophistry in science is referable to incomplete analysis of nature, of systems—to artificial arrangements—to supposing qualities, to assuming principles, to false inductions from imperfect demonstration. ”

“ Or finally, if error were impossible, any and every account of Being or truth, of ideas and of objects, of the world or of nothing at all, would be equally true, or in other words, no truth would ever be defined. For truth we define by its contrast with the error that it excludes. So some ideas certainly can and do err in as far as they undertake to be ideas of objects. ”

“ An examination of this case will present a striking instance of the error into which the strongest minds may be led, whenever they shall depart from the plain, common acceptation of terms, or from well ascertained truths, for the attainment of conclusions, which the subtlest ingenuity is incompetent to sustain. ”

“ The pursuit of a remote and ideal object, which captivates the imagination by its splendour and the reason by its simplicity, evokes an energy which would not be inspired by a rational, possible end, limited by many antagonistic claims, and confined to what is reasonable, practicable, and just. One excess or exaggeration is the corrective of the other, and error promotes truth, where the masses are concerned, by counterbalancing a contrary error. ”

“ In our own day one would be more tempted, though with equal injustice, to reverse the concluding observation, and consider the seeing any absurdity at all in a thing so simple and natural, to be what really marks the absence of “a competent faculty of thinking.” ”

“ The interpretations of mechanical facts, of meteorological facts, of physiological facts, were at first wrong. In all these cases men set out with beliefs which, if not absolutely false, contained but small amounts of truth disguised by immense amounts of error. ”

“ Hence, these hasty, angry investigations of new facts, and the triumph with which failures are recorded; and hence the wilful overlooking of the axiom that a thousand negatives can not overthrow the evidence of one affirmative experiment. I always distrust those who have declared themselves strongly in the beginning of a controversy. ”

“ Self-destroying error; a kingdom divided against itself, which cannot stand; material knowledge, The higher false knowledge builds on the basis of evidence obtained from the five corporeal senses, the more confusion ensues, and the more certain is the downfall of its structure. ”

“ Judgments of reflection seem to be especially subject to error and as such to be compounded into false concepts and to be long entertained as such. In the act of making the judgment there must be judgments of bodies impinging on one another, leading to judgments of apprehension. ”

“ In your expurgation, of the popular errors, you must be sure that the truth they contain, is in some form as strongly, as effectively composed in your text, or the popular error is truer and better than the truth with which you would replace it. ”

“ I do not think that any one can deny, with confidence born of certainty, the truth of your premises, and it must be admitted that your conclusions are based properly upon those premises, and yet your conclusions are almost invariably utterly absurd, if not absolutely grotesque. ”

“ The Untruth, the Error is loudly exploded, that the workers may not be too many; here and there the real truth will be exploded to let a few bold and stiff-necked errors be on show for a time; there is never a lack of “moral idiosyncrasies,”—formerly called rascalities. ”

“ As for the separation of truth from falsehood, and the resemblance which truth has with falsehood, and for the distinction between what is consistent and what is absurd, on both sides, a balance ought to be formed in which every thing may be weighed. ”

“ For every property, therefore, in facts, or in our mode of considering facts, which leads us to believe that they are habitually conjoined when they are not, or that they are not when in reality they are, there is a corresponding kind of Fallacy; and an enumeration of fallacies would consist in a specification of those properties in facts, and those peculiarities in our mode of considering them, which give rise to this erroneous opinion. ”

“ But unfortunately we never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be. The error is needed to set off the truth, much as a dark background is required for exhibiting the brightness of a picture. ”

“ So the reproach of vagueness and subjectivity and “on the whole”-ness, which can with perfect legitimacy be addressed to the empirical method as we are forced to use it, is after all a reproach to which the entire life of man in dealing with these matters is obnoxious. ”

“ But if, on the other hand, facts are to stand for actual finite events, or for things the essence of which is to be confined to a here or a now—facts are then the lowest, and the most untrue, form of appearance. And in the commonest business of our lives we rise above this low level. ”

“ We need hardly take notice of intentionally false observations, nor of mistakes arising from defective memory, deficient light, and so forth. Even where the utmost fidelity and care are used in observing and recording, tendencies to error exist, and fallacious opinions arise in consequence. ”

“ Their understanding is so feeble in the discernment of falsities, and averting the Errors of reason, that it submitteth unto the fallacies of sense, and is unable to rectifie the Error of its sensations. ”

“ What is constantly repeated or implied, and remains uncontradicted, is at last received almost unconsciously as fact even by those who have the means of knowing it to be incorrect, if they thought about it ”

“ Assertions based on fact stand erect, upheld by the evidence of experience as an upright building by the law of gravity; deception, with all its props of plausible sophisms, is tottering like a wall out of plumb, or a rotten tree upheld by artificial supports which in their turn must yield to the test of time. ”

“ The reason of this is that, being automatic, they lead neither to the discovery of truth nor to the detection of error. It is easy to juggle with words, to argue in a circle, to make the worse appear the better reason, and to reach false conclusions which wear a plausible aspect. ”

“ Often, too, we put, so to speak, the shoe on the wrong foot, or stamp with the wrong seal; and from these wrong and hasty impressions come false opinions. There can be no mistake when perception and knowledge correspond; but we often have one without the other. ”

“ In such controversies, the Conceptions in question are turned in all directions, examined on all sides; the strength and the weakness of the maxims which men apply to them are fully tested; the light of the brightest minds is diffused to other minds. Inconsistency is unfolded into self-contradiction; axioms are built up into a system of necessary truths; and ready exemplifications are accumulated of that which is to be proved or disproved, concerning the ideas which are the basis of the controversy. ”

“ And if we seek to make all perceptions as such ambiguous and contradictory, in order to make room for, and justify, the operations of reason, other difficulties at once beset us. When we attempt to remove this specific ambiguity of perceptive conduct we shall be forced, before we are through, to appeal back to perception, which we have condemned as inherently contradictory, both for data and for verification. ”

“ For I now saw, or thought I saw, what I had always before received with incredulity —that the habit of analysis has a tendency to wear away the feelings: as indeed it has, when no other mental habit is cultivated, and the analysing spirit remains without its natural complements and correctives. The very excellence of analysis (I argued) is that it tends to weaken and undermine whatever is the result of prejudice ”

“ What does it matter if they are said to be inapplicable? Does it follow, because the majority of men still know and practise only what is wrong and false, that the clear-sighted man must follow the blind over the precipice? ”

“ What does it matter how you build, if you have bad bricks to build with; or how you reason, if every idea with which you begin is foul or false? And in general all fatal false reasoning proceeds from people’s having some one false notion in their hearts, with which they are resolved that their reasoning shall comply. ”